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Scrum roles
- 2.
Scrum artifacts
- 3.
Scrum events
As we have seen, the Scrum roles describe people and their relationships on a Scrum Team. These roles define an organizational structure that is well suited to engage in a process of discovery.
Scrum artifacts and Scrum events are tools that are used by Scrum Teams. These tools allow the Scrum Teams to implement the theory of Empirical Process Control. This theory holds that all decisions must be made on the basis of measurements of reality, rather than predictions of future outcomes.
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Transparency : Everything that is or can be known about a subject or object of scrutiny must be available and accessible to everyone involved in any way. Nothing may be hidden; everything must be out on the open and “on the table.”
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Inspection : If transparency exists, those people who are involved must inspect that transparency on a regular, formal basis.
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Adaption : If transparency is inspected on a regular, formal basis, then lessons from that inspection should be learned. Future decisions should be based on lessons learned from past activities.
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The Product Backlog
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The Sprint Backlog
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The Sprint Increment
These Scrum artifacts are all designed to implement, aid, and serve the need for transparency. Each artifact makes something clear.
These artifacts are used in Scrum events. Each Scrum event is an opportunity to put Empirical Process Control to use. Each event is an opportunity for the team to inspect the transparency provided by one of the artifacts and to adapt something as a result.
The Sprint Increment
The most basic Scrum artifact is the Sprint Increment.The Sprint Increment is nothing more than the work product of the Development Team during the Sprint event.
The Sprint Increment is defined as the difference between the product at the end of a sprint when all necessary work has been completed, and the product at the beginning of that sprint before any sprint work has been done. It is called an increment because it represents what has been “added” throughout the course of the sprint. The Scrum Guide defines a product as the cumulative sum of all of the Sprint Increments since the product was first introduced.
The Sprint Increment is an artifact because it is inspected and makes something clear as a result. What does the Sprint Increment make clear? It provides transparency about the current working features and functionality of the product at the end of each sprint. Those features and functions are inspected at the end of every sprint, and future plans are adapted accordingly.
Each Scrum event is an opportunity to inspect and adapt something. The Sprint Increment is inspected during a Scrum event called the Sprint Review. During these reviews, the current state of any product is inspected by Product Owners and any guests they may invite. A conversation ensues about what the product does now (as seen by inspecting the increment) and what it could do in the future. Ideas about future functionality are noted by the Product Owners and are added to the Product Backlog if appropriate. Thus, during sprint reviews, Sprint Increments are inspected and Product Backlogs are adapted.
Summary
Scrum Development Teams are groups of technical people who manage themselves to create finished products. The tools of Empirical Process Control are what they use to do so. A key requirement of Empirical Process Control is transparency. The purpose of the Scrum artifacts is to provide the transparency needed for Scrum Team members to understand what they are doing.
The purpose of the Sprint Increment is to make clear the true state of the product as it is being developed. It is examined at the end of every sprint to generate ideas about what further changes and enhancements might be made in the future.